Equivalence Versus Identity
The CLR (like many other technologies) distinguishes between object equivalence and identity. This is especially important for reference types such as classes. In general, two objects are equivalent if they are instances of the same type and if each of the fields in one object matches the values of the fields in the other object. That does not mean that they are “the same object” but only that the two objects have the same values. In contrast, two objects are identical if they share an address in memory. Practically speaking, two references are identical if they refer to the same object.
Comparing object references for identity is trivial, requiring only a comparison of memory addresses, independent of type. One can ...
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